Phase Change Coordination Polymers for Integrated Photonics – CHIP

Programmable photonic integrated circuits made of non-volatile phase-change materials (PCM) are very appealing systems that can define programmable wavelength filters, which are essential building blocks for communication, sensor applications, quantum information processing, neuromorphic computing and artificial intelligence. Still, the PCM are inorganic chalcogenides, and despites their properties, they have some drawbacks, as Critical Raw Materials, high power consumption and challenging manufacturing issue due to their toughness. In CHIP project we target to use the emerging Phase Change Coordination Polymers (PCCP), made of gold(I) metals and thiolate organic molecules, for their sustainability, phase change coupled with reprogrammable optics (refractive indexes and photoemission) and transparent glass-to-ceramics formation, as an alternative to the chalcogenides. Thus, CHIP aims to explore their integrated photonics properties to develop new reprogrammable optical platforms. Since several fields of integrated photonics will be explored, we expect the discovery of unprecedented behaviors in potential applications of counterfeit, transparent and colored displays, waveguides, optical communication systems and optical manipulation.
The methodology to reach the objectives will be to (i) develop new PCCP with Cu, Ag and Au to tune the color emission, (ii) understand their phase change kinetics at the micro and nanoscales, (iii) fabricate glasses and ceramics with high optical quality and (iv) elaborate nanostructured thin-films of PCCP. Such amorphous/crystalline nanoarchitectures will open the path of new integrated photonics surfaces that may find applications in reprogrammable optoelectronics as metasurfaces, colored displays and/or waveguides. With CHIP project, we intent to develop new paradigms for the next generations of components of optoelectronic chips in order to reduce Europe's dependency of non-EU suppliers and produce new sustainable and economical PCM.